Have you ever bought a bar of washing soap? Specifically the one used to wash utensils; plates, spoons etc., have you?

I have moved in into a new place, am no longer at Electronics City. I stay at Airport Road. The one thing for sure after a month now at the new place is, I miss my mom a lot!

So anyways, almost everyday I realize that something is needed and that I have to go and get it. One of the earliest such realizations was concerning a soap for washing dishes. Yeah! Fruits, snacks, smelly plates, stinking kitchen --- you can do the math there.

I ended up at a general store and told the shopkeeper to give me a washing soap. He dutifully handed me a Cinthol bar. I told him I need a utensils washing soap, or the way I said it, in hindi

"bartan ghisne ka sabun"

Somewhere between the parallels of my Hindi and his Kannada, this caused some severe disturbance which prompted him to make a long face, the kind which is usually seen at condolence meetings. Please note that at this point, I wasn't able to recollect names of any washing soap brands. So what I did do was, a small enactment of how we wash dishes...

First I enacted how a plate is washed, he handed me a Harpic toilet cleaner. So, now I enacted how a spoon is washed, upon which the lady standing next to me in the store gave me a very stern look, while the shopkeeper managed a muffled laugh. Why did they laugh? Try enacting how you'll wash a spoon, and you'll get the point. Yeah, you got it now?

Somehow, the other guy in the shop caught hold of the words 'spoon', 'plate' and to my relief he finally handed me a bar of VIM soap. The upside of the episode, embarassing ore otherwise, was that I ended up with all kinds of washing soaps which were all required.